When Lori Moyer learns the dairy barn is being demolished on her far away Wisconsin home farm, she is devastated. But a journal is found built into the loft and only she remembers the author, a World War I veteran struggling with PTSD. His Journal holds life-changing secrets.
Devastated by news that the dairy barn on her Wisconsin farm is being pulled down and sold off in pieces, Lori Moyer pleads to save it, “It is not just a barn. It is an icon—a way of life!" When a journal is found hidden in a beam of the hayloft, only Lori remembers its author, John Chapman, a soldier survivor of World War I, who Lori’s family hired to finish the new barn. John was solitary, fearful of interaction, and estranged from his own family—but to her, he was a father figure and a storyteller who saved her life and her father’s life too! Now, she wonders if she really did know this man? Struck with the notion that he may have suffered from Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder, she queries the Internet and discovers a secret world John never shared with her. When Lori reads John's journal, his legacy to her, entitled "The Necklace of Words," it resounds with loss, longing, love, anger, and fear. Powerful images spark Lori's own memories of tragedy and joy spent in her long-ago beloved home. The phrase she used playfully, “My barn burned down and now I see the moon” is manifest, and out of the ashes arises the phoenix of self discovery.
Excerpt
TURNING THE CORNER
Sucking mud. John had spent a horrifying night strug- gling, his dreams of the trenches in France, in yellow mud stained red with blood. That, followed by Wisconsin spring weather, rain, and snow-melt in red clay misted in vapor. This day, the remnants of an Alberta clipper mixed it up with April sunbreaks as he loaded heavy milk cans into the wagon, hitched the team and started out to deliver the milk for ship- ping. The horses navigated the impassable road, stomping through puddles and rivulets. The little creek of water off the hill had, over winter, been but a frozen dream. Now it roared awake overwhelming its plugged up culvert to flood the road. The team surged across this river, dragging the wagon, churn- ing up ground. On the other side Dan appeared out of the fog, red ooze spilling over rubber boots.
“To a man idle and stuck a-foot in this mud, John, you are a prince driving a carriage! Work praises the man. I’ll just ride along high and dry while our horses earn their keep slogging.” Dan patted Tuck’s round wet rump with appreciation as he scrambled up shedding clumps of muck, to sit alongside John on the wagon seat. The horses stood dripping and blowing, steam making a halo around them in a runaway sunbeam escaped from the fog. Just then a breeze softly drew back haze curtains and spring showed herself as a teasing tart a-sparkle with diamonds.
Professional Reviews
Reader's Favorite Review of The Way Back
Reviewed by Rich Follett for Readers' Favorite 5 Stars
John Chapman, a World War I veteran with PTSD has a poet's soul. He finds work as a farmhand with a dairy farming family who, in their own stalwart, beholden-to-no-one way, help him find the 'way back' to wellness and a happy life. The narrative is a kind of historical/poetic frame story, weaving together the lives of three generations of characters through the central prism of Chapman's journal, found in a barn being torn down in present day Wisconsin and lovingly shared by the author as a tribute to Chapman.
Chapman's poetry alternates with historical and cultural references from World War I through the Great Depression to the dawning of World War II, and colloquial Wisconsin dialogue that is as heartwarming and educational as it is funny in that particularly wry Midwestern way that can only be depicted accurately by a native. S.K. Carnes is a gifted writer at the top of her game, capturing the images and episodes of an era and a heartland lifestyle that is rapidly vanishing from the American consciousness with a clarity and poetic vision that render the narrative unique and compelling. In an early glimpse of Chapman, Carnes describes her quiet hero as having "Muckelty-dun eyes rimmed in blue ... eyes of that color could steal your heart away." Prose like that does not come along every day!
The Way Back has romance, history, adventure, drama, poetry, a quietly epic feel, a magnificently rendered landscape, and eclectic characters unlike any of the 'ho-hum' heroes of lesser fiction. Having once entered John Chapman's world, readers will want to linger, holding close one of the most pure-of-heart and earnestly crafted narratives in recent memory.
The Way back By Faridah Nassozi for Readers Favorites
Twelve years after coming home from the war, John was still fighting, but this time he was fighting the demons from the war that had taken away his life, leaving only a shadow of his old self. The damage from the war left him with many emotional scars that led to him losing the family he had cherished. He left home looking for work, hoping to find something that would help him get better so he could be the man he was before the war. When he found work as a barn builder on a farm, all he could do was try his best, one day at a time, recording every glorious moment that he spent on the farm. The people there became his new family, including their little girl Lori, whom he cared for as he would his own child. Now very many decades later, that little girl uses his journal to try to tell the story of the man who built the magnificent barn and how he impacted on her life forever.
The Way Back: A Soldier's Journey by S.K. Carnes is a story about a man's struggle to be himself again after a war that left him just a shell, filled with rage at the universe. The book is brimming with anguish and triumph as a man fights unseen demons, trying to overcome the damage that took his soul. The tone in which the story is told makes it very easy to connect with John through his struggles, feel empathy for him through his losses, and celebrate his victories. As I read John's story, I could clearly 'see' the beautiful farmland that offered him a second chance at life, replete with crops and animals and all the amazing characters that cared for them.
The way Back by PJ Reece
Even if you don't know or care anything about Wisconsin or horses or heifers or barns or bulls named Goliath or World War One or PTS syndrome or poetry or love or anguish or murder or friendship or magic... this is a book to love for its language alone. This is a book I couldn't put down simply because the poetry of the storytelling warmed me all over. Read the other reviews for the synopsis, because I only want to rave about S. Carnes' way with words. This is one of those novels that wows you with its artistic tumble of words, their rhythm, their authenticity, their tension, all creating fresh meaning and perspective. I was privy to this as a work-in-progress, and I must tell you how I am delighted to see the pieces fall together so well. Susan C. is a talent beyond her wild imaginings. More, Sue, more!
Joli Stewart is raised in the lap of luxury on her father's plantation near Charleston, South Carolina. High spirited, non-traditional and head strong, Joli refuses to accept any interference in her life or her romantic decisions. Follow her life dur
A delightfully rare Historical Novel. 85% a biography of a spy, musician, mother and her neice trapped behind German lines in World War I. This background led to a diplomatic post in World War II. Aged 92, Vera disclosed her past life one year before
